Patrick apologizes for health website glitches

Gov. Deval Patrick publicly apologized on Thursday for the health care coverage challenges brought on by the Affordable Care Act.

Matt MurphyState House News Service

BOSTON – Gov. Deval Patrick apologized Thursday for the problems created during the transition to the Affordable Care Act and announced a plan to repair the faulty website that has frustrated enrollment efforts.

A new team put in place by Patrick, including a top executive from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, is helping technology vendor CGI fix its dysfunctional website. The team will travel to Washington, D.C., today to discuss with federal officials their options for making sure no one’s coverage lapses.

“To the people whose transition has not been smooth, I join my colleagues from the Connector and MassHealth in apologizing to you for the inconvenience and I want to thank you for your patience. I also want to assure you that we’re not going to let anyone slip through the cracks,” Patrick said a press conference Thursday morning.

With more than 100,000 applications for coverage plans in various stages of completion and more expected in the coming weeks, Patrick said he hopes to know within weeks whether it will be possible to guarantee enrollment by the March 31 deadline. If not, he said the administration will ask the federal government to extend current coverage beyond that date.

The administration is hiring Optum to advise them on short- and long-term fixes to the site and to help clear the backlog of people who have tried to sign up for insurance but encountered technical barriers. Optum will also work with CGI.

“From what we’ve seen, the technology is fixable,” said Andy Slavitt, the executive vice president of Optum.

Patrick said Massachusetts still has the highest health insurance coverage rate in the nation at 97 percent. He said that on Jan. 1, 130,000 Connector subscribers were successfully switched to new plans under the expansion of MassHealth, and 30,000 adults and children were enrolled in the Medicaid program.

Before deciding to change management, the administration hired MITRE, pf Waltham, to review the site and its deployment.

The MITRE report cited a lack of CGI resources, including too few staff, to successfully develop the website, as well as a lack of communication and management structure.

State officials recently acknowledged knowing about problems with the project early in 2013, which required deadlines to be changed and the project’s scope to be reduced. The Connector scaled back its expectations of the site for the Oct. 1 launch but received assurance from CGI that the site would be fully functional shortly thereafter.

Patrick said the officials realized the site had “hit a wall” over Thanksgiving when the data being entered into the website by consumers was not being transferred correctly into the system.

“It’s clear from the report that the performance of the vendor hired to build and expand the website has been consistently substandard,” Patrick said.

Patrick said CGI has been paid roughly $15 million of its $69 million contract with the state, and won’t be paid for anything more unless it delivers the functioning website that was promised.

READ MORE about this issue.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.